Professor Hasday’s Intimate Lies and the Law Wins Scribes Book Award

Professor Jill Hasday’s book, Intimate Lies and the Law, has won the 2020 Scribes Book Award “for the best work of legal scholarship published during the previous year.”

Scribes, the American Society of Legal Writers, has presented this award since 1961. Each year, the honor goes to a single work selected from a highly competitive field.

Intimate Lies and the Law (Oxford University Press 2019) is the first book to uncover the hidden body of law governing deception in dating, sex, marriage, and family life. People often assume that intimate deception is a quintessentially private phenomenon that courts and legislatures leave untouched. Hasday reveals how the legal system pervasively regulates deception within intimacy. She argues that the law has placed too much emphasis on protecting intimate deceivers and too little importance on helping the people they deceive.

“We are thrilled to see Professor Hasday’s remarkable new book recognized with this prestigious award,” said Dean Garry W. Jenkins, the William S. Pattee Professor of Law. “Her book delves deeply into an important yet neglected area of life and relationships in a highly readable and entertaining way while persuasively advocating for systemic change. Professor Hasday’s book exemplifies innovative scholarship at its best, a hallmark of Minnesota Law. We congratulate her on this exciting and impressive recognition.”

Hasday is a Distinguished McKnight University Professor and the Centennial Professor of Law at the Law School. Her previous book, Family Law Reimagined, was published by Harvard University Press in 2014. Her articles have appeared in many leading law reviews, including the Harvard Law Review, Stanford Law Review, New York University Law Review, Michigan Law Review, California Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, UCLA Law Review, Vanderbilt Law Review, and Minnesota Law Review.